Real English Conversation: Advanced English Lesson - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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Are you ready to immerse yourself in a real English conversation?
Hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com, and today I have a special guest.
This is my husband, Dan, and we're going to be having a real English conversation today about travel, some surprising things that we've experienced, some embarrassing things we've done abroad, and I hope that this conversation will help you to immerse yourself in English so that you can feel confident talking about your travels in English too.
Like always, I have created a free PDF worksheet, which is right now over Dan's face.
It includes all of today's questions, vocabulary that just naturally comes up in our conversation, definitions, sample sentences, and at the bottom of the worksheet, you can answer Vanessa's challenge question so that you never forget what you've learned in today's lesson.
You can click on the link in the description to download that free PDF worksheet today.
All right, Dan, are you ready to get started?
I'm ready.
Let's talk about traveling.
Okay.
Well, I have a couple questions prepared, and I don't really know what we're going to say along the way.
This is just a- These are the best conversations.
Real conversation.
I think.
All right.
My first question- That's why I'm here.
Yes.
My first question is, where was the first place you traveled abroad?
The first place I traveled abroad.
Well, the first place that felt like I traveled abroad was actually New York City. Because when you're in America, if you've never been to New York before, it feels like a different country because there's really no place like it, and there's just so much diversity and action going on there, but that's a bit of a cheat.
The real first place I traveled abroad was Costa Rica.
How old were you? Okay.
Yeah, I was 18, and I went with my school, our college that we went to, where we met, and we went on a winter trip, I guess you would call it.
I don't remember what they call it.
It's like a study trip. Yeah.
Yeah.
They called it something, and I was a biology major back then.
Not anymore.
We traveled to Costa Rica to do basically exploration of animals and biodiversity there, so we stayed in little huts and stuff, and heard the sounds of the jungle all around us.
It wasn't a very cultural experience, I don't think.
It was a very nature-based experience.
Yeah.
Even though there was a sprinkling of that every now and then, but I remember we went to resorts and stuff, so those places are really catering to, let's say, the Western audience, so it didn't really feel as legit as some of the other travels I've done abroad later in life.
Yeah.
How about you?
My first time traveling abroad was when I studied abroad my senior year, which is my final year of college, and I studied abroad in the UK, in England, in a town called Oxford, and I studied abroad at Oxford University.
It sounds very academic and like, oh, you have to be extremely smart to be able to study abroad at Oxford, but let me tell you- That's how I felt looking at the pictures.
I was like, whoa.
I mean, the city- She's in Hogwarts.
The city of Oxford.
Yes, they filmed a lot of Harry Potter in Oxford, and that city is so beautiful.
It is fantastic.
I highly recommend visiting, but the study abroad program from our college was kind of just your grades had to be okay, and then you had to fill out the visa paperwork and you could go.
Sounds like a win to me.
It was great, and this was the first time I'd ever traveled by myself and the first time I had ever left the US.
So it was definitely one of those life-changing experiences where I could be independent, see the world a bit.
I had some money saved, so I got to travel through Europe a bit as well.
I wasn't sure you'd ever come back.
It was wonderful.
It was so lovely.
She caught the bug.
If you go to London- The travel bug.
Yes, the travel bug.
You can get the bus to Oxford.
It goes every 10 minutes from London to Oxford, and it's so easy to get there, so beautiful.
Highly recommend it. Thank you, England.
It was cool.
I went one time.
She lived there.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was great.
So my next question is kind of a follow-up of that because I think there's a stereotype of Americans.
I want to know, do you think it's true that most Americans don't travel abroad?
Because it is definitely a position of privilege.
You have to have money, you have to have connections, all of this to be able to travel abroad, no matter what country you live in, but it's kind of a stereotype, right?
Americans don't travel to other countries. It's a stereotype, and I think it's generally true.
Yeah.
I mean, America's just so big, and people who live here tend to be ...
We have a large rural population, I would say, like people who just live in their small towns and they never leave, or even a bigger city I used to live in, Pittsburgh, is a very insular city.
The people live there, they have their sports teams, they love it.
This is what we do.
This is Pittsburgh.
We're Pittsburghers for life, so a lot of cities are like that as well. My uncle, my aunt and uncle live in Pittsburgh, and until a few years ago, they had never left the city of Pittsburgh.
Even the state?
Even the city of Pittsburgh.
They had never left the city of Pittsburgh until a couple years ago, and ironically, the reason they left Pittsburgh was to go watch some Pittsburgh sports games in other cities.
But I think that is kind of- The stereotype, but I did do a little research.
Oh, you got numbers.
The general stat that I found was that as of 2023, 52% of Americans have passports.
Okay. So the majority of people do, and it said that it's risen a lot.
It said it was only 5% in 1990.
Why are they going to Canada?
That's the question.
Canada doesn't count.
If you asked a random person on the street in the US, have you been to another country?
Not in a big city, just in a small city.
If they say yes, I kind of guarantee, I might even bet $50 that they would say, oh yeah, I've been to another country.
I've been to Niagara Falls. That's the stereotypical place.
I'm thinking more about it, though.
There's a lot of border crossings, though, with Mexico, so there's a lot of people who are probably citizens who have family back in Mexico.
That probably happens quite a bit.
I'd imagine the majority live on the borders.
Maybe even more.
Maybe more than Canada.
Yeah, maybe so.
Just a guess.
When I first traveled abroad, I got responses from people, from other people in my life, like, are you sure you want to do that?
You're going to go alone to England?
That's not safe.
They were really concerned.
Why would you do that?
I was definitely gung ho.
I'm going to do this.
This is going to be great.
And certainly when you've traveled abroad and come back home, those arguments just sound really silly.
Most places, a lot of places in the world are extremely safe and totally fine to travel to, and to hear from people around me, oh, you shouldn't do that.
Why would you do that?
It was really shocking and pretty common.
Stuff sounds scary to Americans, like subway travel if you're from regular places.
Middle America, they're like, oh, he's going underground and riding a train?
I think some people would like to travel, like would like to go to Paris or would like to go to London, these kind of stereotypical places that appeal to Americans.
Selfie by the Eiffel Tower.
Yes, those type of high tourist destinations.
But it is true, we don't have much vacation time in the US compared to Europe, for example.
And it's so expensive.
If you're in France and you want to go to Italy, so easy, so cheap, no problem.
Oh, you mean it's expensive for us to travel?
Yeah, if an American wants to go to Rome, it is extremely expensive.
It's far away.
Yeah, it's far, you have to have a lot of vacation time, it's expensive.
I understand.
It's a cultural thing too, like that fear we were talking about of the unknown.
If you have never known anyone who has left the US, like the people who were talking to me, of course you would think it was scary and why would you do that?
But the more people you know who have traveled, the less scary it is, the more normal it is.
And I bet it's changing too, just based on the interconnectedness of the world, people getting new ideas and wanting to travel around.
For sure, for sure.
All right, you ready for my next question?
Yes.
It's getting a little bit embarrassing with the next question.
Oh dear.
All right, I want to know what is a cultural mistake that you've made while you were abroad?
How much time do we have?
Probably more than I know because I'm one of those people who will just miss the cultural mistake and I'll be like, what?
I guess this was one of those times, right?
So in France, when we worked on some farms, willing workers on organic farms, woofing is what we did for a little bit.
And so we were on this farm and this lady who was kind of running the program, I don't speak any French, you speak a lot of French.
So she comes up, like walks up towards me to give me the bisous.
So like a little kiss on your cheek as a greeting?
But you know, I don't know what that is and that's kind of awkward to me.
So she was kind of like walking at me, towards me.
Big smile, good morning.
And I think I probably did like a little wave, like hi.
But then like I went around her.
And so apparently she told you about this later, like what's wrong with Dan?
Yeah, she came up to me later and was like, is Dan okay?
Is he sick?
She didn't understand why Dan didn't give her the bisous in the morning because in France it's common.
Yeah, you just, you don't even need to put your lips, you just put your cheek to their cheek.
And for me, when I first lived in France, this was before our experience in France, that was definitely a culture shock for me.
Because for Americans, your face is so intimate.
You don't get near my face unless you're my husband.
Like this is very intimate.
We do this.
We sometimes give hugs.
Sometimes give hugs, but when I, I remember one time I went to a wedding in France.
And in the room, it was everyone from my French host family.
It was like in a little, like official office.
It was just kind of a small room where they were signing the documents.
And I was introduced to every person, like 30 people in the room, a bisous to every single person.
To each person.
I just remember thinking, I cannot imagine this happening in the U.S.
This is very American too.
That's kind of, that's a stereotype.
And for me, I actually, I got used to it because it was so common just to give the bisous that it becomes second nature almost.
I remember another time that I made a mistake.
I think I've shared this with my students before.
When we were in Korea, I feel like these cultural mistakes happen when you're living in a place because you're more aware of what should happen.
When you just travel for like a couple of days.
You're not in tourist destinations as much either.
Yeah, I remember in Korea, I was ordering some kimbap or something like a little rice roll at this small little restaurant.
And it was our first or second week in Korea.
And I had not, I knew a couple words.
Like I knew America is Miguk and American is Miguksaram.
And a lot of people asked us, where are you from?
That was a really common question when you're, you look different than the other people in the country.
So a lot of people asked us, where are you from?
And I knew the word where in Korean.
So when I walked into the restaurant and I ordered kimbap to go.
I don't remember this.
You weren't there.
The lady at the restaurant asked me a question that started with where.
And I assumed that she was asking, where are you from?
But instead she was asking, where do you want it delivered to?
And because it was a cultural thing that you don't wait there to get the food at that restaurant.
They will deliver it to you because we just worked in the next building and she was expecting that they would just deliver it to me.
So when she said, where, and the rest of her question, I said, Miguk, America.
And she looked at me like, you want me to deliver this food to America?
What?
And then I tried to understand what is she talking about?
And I tried to just, I just stayed and waited until the food was cooked and then I took it with me.
But later I realized, oh, she thought I was saying I wanted the food delivered in America.
Asking that question.
That's funny.
That reminds me of when we went to a restaurant in Korea.
I don't know if this counts, but you don't really eat stuff with forks and knives, but we definitely asked for forks and knives for something.
I don't remember what it was, but that's definitely a classic American faux pas to be like, hey, can I have a fork and a knife over here?
Especially if it's like an Asian country that uses chopsticks.
I must say though, on our behalf, we got really good at using chopsticks.
Sure.
I can use them.
No problem.
They would make fun of the way I held it.
I have a claw grip, apparently.
Your little hands when you do that.
My little hands?
Because you were like this.
You hold the chopsticks.
I like it.
All right.
The last and fourth question is this.
What were some times that you were surprised by something cultural in another country?
This is a huge question.
There's probably millions of times.
This is my favorite part about traveling because it's just kind of like constant surprises all the time.
It's really fun and interesting for people like us.
I would say in South Korea, because we lived there, I have the most experience there.
So many things surprised me about that country, but one thing that really just jumps to mind from an American perspective is just the safety of the cities there.
I mean, almost everything is a city compared to America.
That's another surprise, right?
Some people are rural, but most people live in the city and in high-rise towers and stuff.
So just walking around, especially at night, you would just be going down dark alleys or into the park at night.
In America, you just would never do that because people, whether it's true or not, people have it associated with danger, like walking into a dark alley at night.
I just remember walking in one and being like, should I be a little nervous?
And then a little kid pops out the door and is like, hi.
It's like, oh.
Or you see somebody just taking a nap with their phone sitting next to them, like no big deal.
Or we're in the park, we're talking with our friends, we're drinking beer in the park.
You can't do that here usually.
I remember one time we went to the bank and our Korean coworker went with us to help translate.
And we had a bunch of cash because we'd just gotten out cash for some reason.
And we were trying to figure out how to get back to somewhere.
And she's like, oh, we can cut down this street.
And it was this little dark alley.
And I was like, we just have all this cash.
We just came from the bank.
Why would we go down this alley?
We'll go get mugged.
And it was totally fine.
It's just so shocking how safe it is.
It's not even that America is that dangerous.
But it is more dangerous than a place like South Korea.
It just is.
So you just have built in, especially in cities.
Because for whatever reason, the way American cities are organized or lack thereof, there's just a lot more crime in the city regions.
But people in South Korea, everybody lives in the city.
This is our home.
We're living in it all the time and it's a lot safer.
It's a totally different vibe.
One, I actually prefer, I think America actually stinks at doing cities.
We could get a lot better at doing that and learn a thing or two.
That's just my opinion.
But yeah, that was really surprising to me.
I have a good safety anecdote where my sister, she lived in South Korea too for a period of time.
But she didn't move there straight from the US.
She was living in Argentina, in Buenos Aires.
And then she moved to South Korea.
And she told me the first day or the first day or two that she was in Korea.
She was on the bus and everyone was looking at their phones.
And when she walked on the bus and she saw that everyone had a phone, she was scared.
She went and sat away from everybody who had a phone by herself because- They just had their phones out.
She was certain that someone was going to come on the bus, grab their phones and do something violent.
Because where she had been living in Buenos Aires, I don't know what it's like now.
Apparently Buenos Aires is worse.
I don't know what it's like now in Buenos Aires, maybe not everywhere there.
But she was so used to never showing, never wearing earrings or necklaces or her phone in public.
Somebody did like rip jewelry off her there, right?
Sorry, Buenos Aires.
This is what we've heard.
That was her experience.
So when she moved to Korea, it was shocking.
The safety issue was shocking for her too.
And you just get used to it after a period of time.
But something that also surprised me, I wrote down a little- On a different note.
Yes, a little idea here too, is that I was surprised how many people in various countries that we've lived in thought it was cool that we were American.
I felt embarrassed by that because when I- Not France though, right?
It depends.
Because when I was living in France as a nanny, an au pair for a year, and this scenario happened so many times where I was with my friends who were Austrian, German, Australian, Swedish, and British.
And the group of us girls would go everywhere together.
We did so many things, it was a wonderful time.
And when we met people, they would ask, where are you from?
And everyone would say where they were from.
And when I said I was from the US, you could tell they just stopped and would say, oh, an American.
Oh, and they would ask me questions like, is it true this?
Is it true this?
I guess it's a little more unusual.
I don't know.
I think there was something.
I mean, there are Americans that travel, but I don't know.
I felt so embarrassed by that because- Maybe your age.
I wasn't cooler than my friends.
I'm just a normal person.
You're a little biased here.
But it felt so weird to stop the conversation for something like that, especially when my friends are super cool.
Why not ask them about their countries?
And sometimes I said I was from Canada just to stop those questions.
I guess you didn't have the Euro vibe.
Maybe.
Europe is not one country at all, even close to it, but it's still more common maybe to be like, I guess they were taking gap years too, right?
A lot of them.
Maybe that's more of a common trend.
It surprised me that that was something, at least at that time, which was what?
15 years ago now almost?
That was cool.
So maybe it's changed a lot because there's more real Americans out there in the world, so we're less cool, I guess.
One other thing I wanted to- Should we say more?
Because you could talk about this forever.
I did have one other thing that I wanted to say.
It was surprising.
Something cultural that was surprising was when we were teaching abroad in Korea, a lot of our family and friends said stuff to us like, oh, aren't Koreans really good at education?
Their test scores are always the highest, like Chinese, Japanese, and Korean test scores.
It's kind of like a household knowledge in the US that especially East Asian students are really smart.
They get really high test scores, and so because we were teaching in a school there, our family and friends often asked us, is it true?
What's that like?
Yes.
Because they're worked to the bone.
That's the balance that shocked me.
Yes, Korean students get great test scores, all of this, but what's the cost?
We were teaching seven, eight, and nine-year-olds at 7 p.m., 8 p.m. at night, and that was so normal.
For me, my heart broke for those kids.
You don't need to be in here all day studying.
They went from school to school to homework to a little bit of sleep to school to school to homework to a little bit of sleep over and over again.
Yes, so what's the cost?
I think that that was something I loved living in Korea, and it was wonderful, but at that job- Korean people love you.
Yes, it was so great.
But this structure, a little iffy for the kids.
Yes, for people like us who- Mental health too, it shows.
Yes, really cared about the mental health of the kids and just other people, not just children, but it was really hard to continue in that job specifically where we were participating in that, and we were seeing that every day.
I think our best times with the students that we taught in Korea was when we took them outside the classroom.
We had a couple parties in the park, pizza parties in the park, or we took the kids to an amusement park, or we went to the zoo with the kids.
They were using English all day, and it was no problem.
They were having a great time, and I felt like, oh, they can be kids.
They can learn English, but also be kids and have fun, and those are some of the most precious memories to me, I think, being in Korea.
Okay, I got one more thing.
Okay.
What surprised me about traveling abroad is this is a little bit connected to what we've been talking about, but just how easy it is to travel everywhere.
So many other countries just have more buses, more trains, more subways, more ways to get around, and also just infrastructure to walk places safely.
In America, there's lots of places that they design only for cars, and maybe you could walk there, but nobody in their right mind wants to.
And so that's just all over the place here, but especially a place like South Korea, it's just so easy to get everywhere.
In the entire country, we would take a trip from the city we were in to the beach, and it was very easy to take just different sources of transportation to get there without a car.
Yeah, that's pretty common in Europe, too.
You can take a train, and we haven't visited everywhere in the world, obviously.
There's big gaps in our experience, like South America, Africa, Southeast Asia.
We haven't been to a lot of those places.
But someday.
But I think to this point, I'm curious for those of you watching this, if you have visited the US, and you have visited a place that was not New York City, not LA, not San Francisco, how did you get around?
Did you rent a car?
If you went to go visit, I don't know, Houston, Texas, how did you get around?
Did you have to rent a car?
Did you take a bus?
I'm very curious what international travelers to the US who visit not big cities, what do you do?
Maybe you rent a car.
I mean, that's a very possible thing to do.
That's pretty much how you got to do it.
You got to do it like that, yeah.
I'm very curious to hear what you have to say.
I want to say thank you, Dan, for participating in this conversation.
You're welcome.
It's always great to have another half of the conversation, not just me talking, because a lot of my students can understand me by myself.
But to add another person, it's a good level of challenge.
You know me, I'm always game for easygoing conversation.
Well, I'm glad you are, thank you.
And also, I wanted to let you know, if you enjoyed this style of conversation where we are speaking real English about real topics that you can use in your daily life, I want to invite you to join us in our course, The Fearless Fluency Club.
Right now, when this video comes out, we are having a big yearly discount on the yearly membership.
That means you can join The Fearless Fluency Club for an entire year for a 55% off discount.
It's a blowout.
Amazing.
And I want you to be able to hear real conversations like this.
In the course, there are over 40 conversations with other native English speakers, plus 80, 90 conversations with us like this that you have never seen before.
Plenty of PDFs that you can study with worksheets.
There is a wonderful community of motivated English learners.
I host live stream English lessons every Sunday.
Many students meet together on Zoom to speak.
So I would love for you to continue your English journey with us.
You can get more information about The Fearless Fluency Club in the link in the description so that you can get the discount while it is available.
And also, of course, you can download the free PDF for today's lesson.
It is here over Dan's face.
You can click on the link in the description to download that with all of today's vocabulary, questions, ideas, concepts.
I may even add a few links and videos in there so that you can expand your study of this travel topic.
You can click on the link in the description to download that free PDF worksheet today.
Well, thanks, Dan, for joining me.
I appreciate it.
No problem.
And thanks so much, everyone, for learning English with us.
I'll see you again next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel.
Bye.
But wait, do you want more?
I recommend watching this video next where you will immerse yourself in another real English conversation between Dan and I about work.
This video includes a little work test for Dan.
I wonder if he can pass.
Are you curious?
Well, I'll see you there to find out.